Orin saves the Day! Whoop! Whoop!

The venerable old Massey 750 broke down Saturday. The water pump failed. The combine has been wanting to overheat for most of the season and it has been one thing after another. Small leaks in hoses, the rotating screen plugged up with fine dust, not to mention the A/C problems.
We had ten acres of Meadow Foxtail to combine and it is supposed to rain Monday. The Foxtail is a very very light seed and requires a very slow speed. We put cardboard over the intake on the wind on the combine so it doesn't blow the seed out the back.
We thought we had a spare water pump but it was of a different style. The Perkins engines change water pump styles with every application and they do not interchange. Then I got the bright idea of Texting fellow farmer Orin (who is not a lazy farmer) and it so happened that not only did he have a water pump but his father was driving to a family reunion in my very city. So, we had a new water pump within the hour and were up and running before long.
It was a relief to find out Orin was actually a real person, actually I did meet him last year at the ag show. Who knows with the internet. He could have been a lady in New York City pretending to be a farmer. You know that makes no sense. I've got nothing funny to say this morning...
Anyway, we got the combine running, but it still wants to overheat and now the water temp gauge failed and the sensor that tells you if the return concave thingy is working flew apart and then the wind started blowing so hard we wouldn't unload the combine, or fill the tank above half full, so we quit and put trucks in the barn.
Such is life.
I should be in Church right now so probably next week will be a mess also.
Tonight we are watching movies on the barn.
It will be a cartoon extravaganza!
(unless it rains)

A brush with fame?

I had an interesting experience yesterday. The editor of No-Till farmer came to visit me. It was not really an out of the blue sort of thing. He is in Oregon to interview a couple farmers who are strip-tilling and no-tilling  and he wanted to talk to a fellow I am internet friends with.  This farmer is sort of a mechanical genius and has invented a really interesting one pass tillage system.
I did not really get ready for the visit, as in clean the shop and polish my drill, as I figured he was just going to stop by as a friend of Ed Winkle.
The idea of being in a national magazine made me a touch nervous and as I have a lot to do I kind of rationalized it all away. As in, if you ignore the problem it will just go away.
I'm just a touch on the insecure side anyway, especially this year as prices are down and our crops tend to be a little weedy and not exactly the yield record setters in the country.
Anyway, the editor was a very nice fellow and quite interesting in his own right. He had lived in Oregon and was familiar with the area and some of the people I know. But, I was a bit on edge when he pulled out his camera.
He did not pull out his little reporter's notepad so I'm thinking I'll be a side bar in a main story. A paragraph, a photo of me talking on the phone and perhaps a good pull quote.
But, I've been thinking about it all after the fact. We spent several hours together and I showed him several fields. Not the best examples... I should have mentioned more people who did more than I and I should have showed him other fields. Oh well...
But, I tend to ramble on and tell stories in much the same manner as you find here on the Lazy Farmer.
I am approaching no-till from a little different perspective. I realized this when we ran into a couple customers when I was showing him a field I may plant. They raved about their results from no-till but used the field I was just saying I could plant into, as an example of a field that would not work.
So here is what I do, and this is why it is different from most other no-till farmers.
A farmer calls me to plant for him. If I have the time I take a look at his field. I look for evidence of pests who will eat the small seedlings. I ask about the pH levels. I check if it is too wet or too dry. I then may try to talk the farmer out of planting-if I really think it won't work, and most of the time I am unsuccessful in that effort.
A lot of times the farmer will just direct me to a field and tell me they have a truck with fertilizer and seed on it and give me the seeding rate and the acres.
So basically, I'm given a field to no-till and I do my best to make it work. Only on our own farm do I plan rotations or make decisions on what crop to plant and where. I've become pretty good at making the best of really difficult planting situations. Our own farm is not even a good example as I often do the paying customers first.
I'm not sure how you would work that example into an article about no-till farming.
Looking back on the discussion I really think the best story would be a feature on how odd our farm is and an article for Farm Show about the Rube Goldberg additions I've made for my drill because I can't afford to buy off the shelf GPS or Fertilizer rate controllers, or foam markers or any other other stuff people pay to have installed on their planters. I have this whole elaborate hydraulic plumbing system so my markers go up and down with the drill, I've got my foam marker wired to a windshield wiper delay  so it makes big piles of foam instead of the usual dribble (it doesn't really work) and I wired up a device using multiple lighting solenoids to turn my GPS, fertilizer rate controller, and acre counter on and off when I raise the drill. And... what sort of strange fixation do I have with driving straight that I have three types of guidance on my drill? Not to mention that I lost my wiring diagram when i hooked all this stuff up and I totally forgot how it is wired. Even my fertilizer plumbing is odd. I have a 30 year old NOS Blumhardt spray boom instead of the universal t-jet boom. I ordered the stainless fertilizer tubes direct and special order from Blumhardt. It is not off-the-shelf stuff.
After the meeting I came in the house and washed up for lunch. (I should have tried to score lunch at the Amity Cafe but I did need to get my bales picked up). I looked in the mirror and realized I was wearing a filthy hat that didn't say Minneapolis-Moline on it. I t read Killingsworth Gear and I got it five years ago at the Tulare ag expo-and a t-shirt that said something about Rhode Island being a state that was not really an island. Somehow I don't think I'm going to make the cover of Successful Farming magazine.
As asked my wife if she had noticed how I was dressed. She said she had but thought I was making a joke or a statement or something. So I guess I've become unconsciously the punchline to my own jokes...
In other news, the transmission is failing on the stacker, the water pump failed on the combine, it may rain, I have four truckloads of straw in the field, the soybeans need water, the Teff is a weed patch and needs to be cut, the alfalfa is now in nearly full bloom and must be cut, but then that brings us back to the long range forecast of scattered showers, which is not hay weather, and I have written a really long sentence. I'm setting in Grandma's old rocking chair and hiding from the world. If you ignore it, it will go away...
Have a nice day...

Note: There are several kind of technical farming terms so if you want to know what I'm talking about read previous posts or just ask.


Also, There is now an 85% chance of movies on the barn, most likely tonight but I'm still not sure. I have a lot to do today. AND, who would check the OFFENSIVE box on the barn movie notice/post from last night? Is it your barn and you are offended because I have not invited you yet this year? Are you opposed to Woody Woodpecker? Do black and white movies frighten you? Curious minds need to know...

Movies on the barn

75 percent chance of movies on the barn Saturday or Sunday night. Call or email for more details.

I'm all wet...

I guess everybody knew that...
Here is another scene from our living history museum! (for your viewing pleasure)

Wine people are snobs

I'm getting ready to go stack in the roughest most pain in the arse field in the neighborhood. I could be worse, it could be a hillside. I am almost finished with baling. The last week has not been the best. As the summer winds down you are faced with poor prices, people who haven't paid you, the actual yield on crops that were underwater for two weeks and a host of small tedious jobs which I hate.
So I am setting in my chair with a cup of coffee and public television. Public TV is all we get since the switch to digital. We get like four channels of OPB.
So this cute lady is explaining to a buff looking gardener type fellow how to taste wine. They are sloshing the wine in the glass, and taking sips... He asks her how you can taste hints of berries and toe-maa-toes in your wine. She smiles slyly and says it is a good question. I suppose this all some sort of lowgrade romance TV that I don't understand but to answer the question, how can you? You can't. They just make this crap up.
Like you could separate out berry, fruit and tomato scents out of the evaporating alcohol in a wine glass? It smells like grapes! Rotten grapes! Lets just be honest and comment it does not taste like rubbing alcohol and how quick it knocks your girl friend on her shapely bottom, or how quickly it impairs her judgement-which I think is the goal anyway. Or how fast it gets you to forget how small the portions of your $100 gourmet meal are, and how many glasses does it take for you to not care that you could have had a big arse steak for the same price?
Can you really taste the difference?

We were once gifted a $100 bottle of wine. It was horrible, sharp and bitter with a yeasty aftertaste. I tasted no berries or tomatoes. I was complaining that we should have regifted or sold it on ebay and instead of ruining our Christian testimony by imbibing snobby wine. But, my wife is a happy cheerful person (13 years of marriage to me has brought her down a bit...) and hates to waste things. She flashed a cheerful smile and said,"We'll have Spritzers!" So she fetched a tray of ice and a can of Sprite and you know it was not so bad. It became a happy dessert drink!
So here I live in the middle of "wine country" and I think any wine that costs more than $20 a bottle is pretentious and I officially don't drink anyway...

The Last MM tractor through the shop?

The uncle ain't as young as he used to be. He took on this Minneapolis-Moline G1050 for a clutch repair job. I really want this tractor. The old fellow who just bought this tractor, wants it to plow and plant 150 acres of hay. I have considered offering to do his plowing in exchange for his tractor. The G1050 has a very reliable engine and good hydraulics. They were not produced in large numbers

Farm Mascot?

I was going to post about the idiots who tailgated me home when i was driving the stacker, or overhauling the knotters when it was 100 degrees and getting the baler in the field after the temp dropped to 75 and a thunderstorm was approaching. Or perhaps rant about AGCO prices. I've got photos from the swather window as we swathed tinder dry wheat stubble in 97 degree temps, I've got photos of what may be the last MM overhaul in the Uncle's shop. But, it is 7:46 a.m. and I should be at work.
Here is something I found behind my seat. I think it came as a price in a box of soap when I was but a wee lad.
Anyone recognize the cartoon character?
I wonder if he should be the farm mascot?